goal achievement

How to Avoid Settling for a Mediocre Engineering Career

February 22, 2016 By EMI

This is a guest blog post by Skye Coleman, PE

In our society it’s not hard to level out.

Everyone judges themselves by the examples of people that they’ve seen come before them. If you’ve maintained most of the same friends since high school and they didn’t follow you into a technical career, chances are you’re the most successful person out of all your peers. Maybe you were the first person in your family to go to college, every dream your parents had for you accomplishing more than them has already been realized.

Few people really challenge themselves anymore. And this goes doubly-so for engineers. [Read more…] about How to Avoid Settling for a Mediocre Engineering Career

Fire, Aim, Ready…Seizing the Initiative in Your Engineering Career

June 1, 2015 By Christian Knutson, PE, PgMP, PMP

One hurdle that many engineers experience in their careers is taking action on the challenging professional projects that will enable them to move forward and up. I’ve had a lot of conversations with engineers who talk about their desire to earn a certification or find a new, better position.

In fact, the conversations are the same one I’ve had with them before. For a couple of the engineers, we’ve walked the same ground for the past twelve months. Why is seizing the initiative in your engineering career such a challenge?

Fear is one reason. That’s a seriously charged word, right? It’s also a word that many don’t like to talk about because it is such an emotional word. But I think it’s the main reason that any of us put off going after the job we want or making contact with the people that will help us get the job we want.

And that’s unfortunate. Because someone has to have that job, it might as well be you!

Pull The Trigger, Take Action!

Using Key Performance Indicators to Manage Your Engineering Career and Life

May 18, 2015 By Christian Knutson, PE, PgMP, PMP

“What gets measured gets done.” ~ Unknown Management Yoda

Ever heard this phrase? More than likely you have and if you haven’t, stick around in the industry long enough and you will. Although this phrase gets thrown around each time there are discussions about organizational performance, it happens for a good reason: it’s true.

Management and business gurus long ago figured out that measuring organizational performance was the surest way to ensure that processes were efficient, goals met and benefits realized. The terms most used to describe the tools of the measurement trade are: [Read more…] about Using Key Performance Indicators to Manage Your Engineering Career and Life

5 Ways to Get Big Picture Thinking

April 27, 2015 By Christian Knutson, PE, PgMP, PMP

How many times have you heard that you need to get the big picture? Or that you feel like you didn’t have the big picture? I’ve heard this phrase repeated too many times to count and each time I do the thought that runs through my mind is this: what exactly is the big picture and how can I get big picture thinking?

The fact is that the big picture depends on your point of view. I don’t believe anyone can truly have the big picture (serious emphasis on “big”) because it’s not possible to see the infinite number of influence points involved. In fact, the bigger the project, program or issue the more difficult it is for anyone – even the leader at the top – to have the big picture.

More importantly, even if you do grasp a glimpse at the big picture it’s only a snapshot in time. As soon as you see it, it’s gone. Changed because of the changing environment, circumstances, interactions between people and components.

This is why instead of fixating on getting the big picture you need to focus on how to get big picture thinking. [Read more…] about 5 Ways to Get Big Picture Thinking

7 Attributes of an Effective Strategic Plan

April 7, 2015 By Christian Knutson, PE, PgMP, PMP

When you think “effective leader” what comes to mind immediately?

I attended a leadership seminar at local university recently. Within the first fifteen minutes we were given a task to go out and ask three strangers this exact question. What do you think the result was?

To be an effective leader you have to be effective at giving vision and setting a direction.

Project Management and Goal Setting

July 22, 2011 By Christian Knutson, PE, PgMP, PMP

Identifying actionable goals can be difficult if you don’t know what you want to achieve and if you don’t have a process in place. As engineers, we know that every successful project has a clearly defined project statement, scope, and process to deliver the intended results. The skills of project management, which we’ve developed delivering projects, can also be applied to defining and delivering our most important goals.

Project management uses an easy five-step process to guide projects from concept through final delivery. This process is successful in delivering projects in the work place and you canuse it in delivering your projects as well. Applying the principals of project management, you can define and deliver your most important goals. The process includes these steps:

Initiating. You initiate by defining your goal statement. Your goal statement includes all major deliverables, assumptions, objectives, constraints, stakeholders, and end date. Just like projects, the goal you’re aiming at may have more than one phase, so identify these and any major milestones as well.

Planning. With the goal statement in mind, turn to planning the resources, the duration, how to overcome constraints, who you’ll need to work with, what alternatives do you need to consider and plan for, what risks are involved, and how each deliverable will be created. The planning may be specific if you know all of the possible parameters involved, or can be elaborated as more information becomes available.

Executing. This step is simple: take action. Begin immediately executing your plan.

Monitoring & Controlling. In projects we use quality control and assurance to ensure the project work is proceeding as planned. Measures of time, cost, and scope are typically used to identify if a project is on plan or not. Depending on the complexity or your goals, you may be concerned about these same quantitative parameters. Or you may be more interested in the qualitative factors associated with achieving your goals, such as the satisfaction that comes from working towards achieving what’s most important to you.

Closing. Success isn’t achieved until the project is complete, whether in the work place or in our own lives. Your goal statement included deliverables, objectives and an end date. Closing out your goal requires that you meet these three elements.

Applied enough times, this process will become second-nature and you’ll find yourself quickly applying it against all of your goals, simple or complex. Face it: you have an unlimited number of things you can focus on, however, you have a limited amount of time to invest. If you’re serious about reaching your highest potential, you must identify your most important goals and generate a specific plan so you can maximize the return on investment of your most valued and constrained resource, your time.

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Alexander Graham Bell